What's a beam blocker for? What does it do? Sorry - these videos pose more questions than they answer for me.

I do like the part where the amp and then the speaker cabinet just materialize out of thin air. I've always wanted a way to do that at gigs. If that's what the beam blocker does, consider me sold.

Today, installed this board - the one with all the diodes -


And finished up the power amp sockets - except for the stuff that comes from the main board -


And installed the gain tone control board, and dropped the main board in, but haven't bolted it down - I'll wait till I have all the wires from the back sorted out -

Tonight, put in the relay boards - the PAB relay board on mine had some extra wires attached to either end of the 22M resistor - I don't know exactly what these are for, as they're not in the layout, but I suspect you could attach a pot or trimmer to these to adjust the PAB level.

Some more stuff today -

installed the power supply for the switches and relays - note that the light really gets in the way of installing the nut on the right side of this. I had to loosen the light up so I could get adequate clearance to get the nut on. My advice would be to install the light last of all - it can wait. Also note - I don't know if I just got the wrong screws or what, but nothing in my bags of hardware would work for installing these boards. I got some bags of 4-40 nuts and bolts from Home Depot in various sizes - the 1/2 inch ones worked well.


Got the footswitch jack and the manual switches wired up -


and finished most of the wiring around the speaker and effect loop jacks - just waiting on the main boards and transformers for the rest -

Today I fixed the voltage regulator - took it out, cleaned it up, reinstalled it with a dab of heat sink compound (the radio shack kind). There's still loctite on the screw threads, just in the right amount this time.



installed some of the stuff around the power tubes-



and the preamp tubes -

Thanks! The layout's all you've got to go by. Don't try this at home boys and girls - unless you've looked at the layout and feel comfortable with it.

As far as getting the hardware in place, the layout is no problem to follow. It's all the subsequent wiring that's the tricky part - you're going to need to be able to identify electronic parts, know the basic wiring and soldering techniques, etc.

I haven't had any problems with figuring stuff out mostly, and Nik is extremely helpful via email if you have questions. Also this forum is useful - for instance, I'm about to take my voltage regulator out and clean it off based on comments on this forum.

I've found several things to be very helpful - a thread by mcinku - http://ceriatoneforum.com/index.php?topic=1160.0 and Tony McKenzie's videos - at http://www.overtonehrm.com/ or on youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/tonymckenziecom - thanks for posting these guys!

Thanks, guys. So - should I take it off and clean it off, throw some heat sink gunk on there; or will it not get hot enough to matter one way or the other? Basically, what I'd like to know - how hot does it get? I presume you guys have one of these - if at all possible - turn it on, let it run for 20-30 minutes, and touch the chassis outside of where this device is, and tell me how hot it gets. If it feels like it might be about 120 degrees F or higher (hot tap water temperature) I'll definitely clean it off.

BTW, I didn't mean to get the loctite all over the place like that - I thought I had just put enough for the threads of the screw, but it seeped all over the place. Tricky stuff to use sometimes. (sorry, had to find out what that button did)

Also BTW, I really appreciate people jumping in and catching things I might have done wrong - there's a lot of little stuff that can be done wrong, and I'd like to catch it before I power it on for the first time!

Today, installed the voltage regulator. This was easy - splay out the legs until they're just far apart enough to fit in the 3 bottom holes of the stand thing, stick the whole thing in a helping hands jig, and solder it on. The spacing for both holes works out perfectly this way. I may have put too much loctite on this one - this part will get hot, I'll need to read up on how loctite reacts to heat - I may need to clean it up a bit.


Finished up the wiring on the pots - all that's left now is the wires that come from the various boards.


I finished up the this thing a few days ago - I don't know what it is, but it's there. I'm unsure about the spacing needed for the cabinet screw that comes through right above it - I'm going to have to check that before final assembly - don't need parts shorting to ground that aren't supposed to.

I finished wiring the switches, volume and tone pots. I was going to get some of that thin heat shrink to put around the cap and resistor leads like in the pictures, but the place I get that from was closed, and I figured that if I'm careful I won't actually need it. Note that I wired the deep switch upside down - I pondered how to do this; whether to flip the whole thing 180 degrees, but then figured I could just mirror image it as the 2 poles are connected anyway whichever way the switch is set.



I started connecting the coax wires to the pots. I've worked with coax for years, and it's one of the most annoying kinds of wires to deal with. I was wondering how I was going to make good durable connections for this situation, and found the pictures showing this add-on ground wire method, which as far as I'm concerned is genius.

To anyone who might run across this with the same question, I got an answer from Nik about this - it seems different manufacturers use different labeling methods, and the cap labeled 390K is indeed a 390pF cap.

Another question -

Regarding the cap that attaches to the Mid Boost switch. According to the layout, pictured below, the cap (with the arrow pointing to it) is supposed to be a 390pF one. The closest thing to that that is in the bag is a small orange one that looks like the one in the various pictures on the web. However, it's labeled 390K, which according to my iphone electronics calculator is only a 39pF cap. Down in this range, this discrepancy probably doesn't matter much, but was just wondering if perhaps I got a wrong part. Does anybody know?

Perhaps this is a question for an email to Nik.

I presume from the pictures posted that the current (October 19 2010) layout for the BM 50w is also wrong. I hope this is the case; as I just wired my BM kit deep switch upside down on purpose. I hope it works right!

Thanks! I may add new questions to this thread - I'm bound to have more of these.

Just got around to opening the bag with the various pcb's in it. I noticed the main board is labeled as a 100w kit - but I've got a 50w kit. Are the main boards the same for both of these? I suspect they would be the same, but want to make sure.

Wow! Thanks for the link and the info. I think mine will look a lot better once I get them glued down. I did spend several days pondering how to do it - in the short time I've been researching this I found several conflicting things about the importance of neatness. And I thank all the people who have posted pics of their builds - I would have been clueless about the heater wires without them.

Tonight I wired up the input jacks. I flipped them around to the outside so there was more room to work on them and keep the spacing right.



Finished -


and a shot of my garage workbench - pretty scary stuff, but consider that I've been cranking out synth modules on this bench for 7+ years, more than 70 of them so far - I know where everything is!


(btw, if you're at all curious about these synth modules I'm talking about, pics are here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sduck409/)